Anyone does know why The CD Forum is off-line since 1 year (or more) ?
Any mirror ? Or any link to understand why the forum was closed (if this was the reason)?
Posted 07 December 2017 - 11:08 PM
Anyone does know why The CD Forum is off-line since 1 year (or more) ?
Any mirror ? Or any link to understand why the forum was closed (if this was the reason)?
Posted 08 December 2017 - 07:59 AM
I've talked with Ed (the last administrator) some months ago about this topic, it seems the server was discontinued by the owners.
About three years ago I made a copy of the database, in the meanwhile was looking for it on my archives and couldn't find it. :-(
Thanks for bringing this up. 911cd was one of my favorite forum sites and it is sad to lose the conversations from those years. I have a few more old archives in the attic, can try to look there too.
Posted 08 December 2017 - 10:19 AM
Yes, it would be great to have it back as a resource, the Wayback Machine has large parts archived but of course it is far from easy to find what one is looking for.
@Ambralivio
JFYI, there was the risk that (for lack of funds) the 911cd would have been shut down, the owner was offered by a Commercial firm (that made some specific software for data backup) some money for the simple ownership of the forum/site.
The agreement was seemingly a big advantage to everyone, the owner would get some money, the forum/site would have been run by the same people, continuing operations as before, the only difference would have been a banner with the advertisements of the new owners company software.
And it worked just fine for - if I recall correctly - two or three years, maybe more.
Then, suddenly the company seemingly folded or however people changed and all the people the site/forum administrators were in contact with simply disappeared.
Unfortunately noone noticed for several months, until problems with the site database surfaced, and the (late) attempts to contact the owner failed, we never got any response.
Nothing new under the sun, timeo Danaos et dona ferentes ...
Wonko
Posted 08 December 2017 - 03:12 PM
About three years ago I made a copy of the database, in the meanwhile was looking for it on my archives and couldn't find it. :-(
Thanks for bringing this up. 911cd was one of my favorite forum sites and it is sad to lose the conversations from those years. I have a few more old archives in the attic, can try to look there too.
@ Nuno,
it should be really nice of you and a helpful thing too, if you could share your old archives or (better) the last you didn't find !
Often, using the Wayback Machine search is the only available option for this task but , as you know, only if you already know the page address of interest...
Yes, it would be great to have it back as a resource, the Wayback Machine has large parts archived but of course it is far from easy to find what one is looking for.
@ Wonko,
thanks for the info. It's a real pity, as I was also a registered member there...
Posted 08 December 2017 - 05:47 PM
Posted 08 December 2017 - 06:56 PM
And that's exactly the issue of a company owning a site that is primarily a forum: If the company goes under then the forum is gone too, unless someone salvages it. Forums should generally be community-owned/operated.
Posted 08 December 2017 - 10:33 PM
This forum is balanced from budget perspective, ads running on the site are enough for the server costs. The ad revenue has been lowering, and fortunately the hosting costs have also been lowering hosting. At the beginning back in 2005 was really expensive to keep a server running.
Even it wouldn't be possible to rent a server, I'd likely be hosting the site directly from my home server (it is slower, has no monthly costs). For me would be great if both google (the ad provider) and the server company could both work directly with some virtual currency or account (e.g. paypal). This way even with me out of the picture due to some accident, there would be an automatic way to keep the server running ad eternum.
We are well served with trusted administrators to keep the machine running. We have good forum moderators so that spam is dealt swiftly, sometimes spammers aren't caught fast enough in due time and then get traumatizing treatment by Wonko & company.
Would be difficult to guess the future. I'm putting my hopes on https://github.com/ipfs/ipfs
Especially because of forum software running on top of IPFS such as http://boards.ydns.eu/
This would mean a permanently running board that would keep running even if the domain name and central server go away.
Posted 09 December 2017 - 07:31 AM
Posted 09 December 2017 - 09:17 AM
On my side I've got a Synology DS115j earlier this year, costing some 70 EUR at Saturn (a German electronics retailer) plus a 4Tb drive to go along: https://www.synology...products/DS115j
The area where I live isn't exactly safe, so about a year I got a set of WIFI cameras and the recordings are stored on this synology machine. IP cameras are really cheap right now. Not only they have wireless, they also come with builtin night vision and cost about 20~35 EUR per device: http://www.dx.com/p/...-eu-plug-478092
On my side wouldn't host the forum at home because:
An external server dedicated just for that purpose works good.
Posted 13 December 2017 - 02:16 AM
just out of curiosity, how big is the reboot database now?
Posted 13 December 2017 - 05:32 AM
The demise of sites like 911cd.net is exactly why you need someone to mirror it *before* it goes down. Although I wouldn't consider it since I'm not a member there, disk space is also a consideration. And mirrors can get really big really fast, depending on the site. I'm currently mirroring just the AMD64 wiki portion of gentoo.org (which is just a part, and only a subdomain), thusfar it's 10GB and still not finished after 2 consecutive days (no throttling, full speed ahead).
Posted 13 December 2017 - 05:02 PM
just out of curiosity, how big is the reboot database now?
The MySQL dump is about 2 Gb in size.
Posted 13 December 2017 - 06:07 PM
The demise of sites like 911cd.net is exactly why you need someone to mirror it *before* it goes down. Although I wouldn't consider it since I'm not a member there, disk space is also a consideration. And mirrors can get really big really fast, depending on the site. I'm currently mirroring just the AMD64 wiki portion of gentoo.org (which is just a part, and only a subdomain), thusfar it's 10GB and still not finished after 2 consecutive days (no throttling, full speed ahead).
not just 911cd.net and the huge amount of knowledge that was lost, but also even older sites like the ubcd4win forums when Ben disappeared. even though the primary focus there was BartPE which as been defunct for years there was still mountains of information, tools, still relivent to todays winbuilder/pebakery/LiveSystemPro/wimb's Make_PE3/etc as well as a great community that are lost.
Posted 08 October 2018 - 11:59 AM
I have good news!
Was cleaning up some old hardware and looking on the files inside. In one of the laptops I have found a backup of the MySQL 911cd.net forum conversations.
Made a few copies more just to make sure it does not get lost again. Instead of a single MySQL file is a set of files, so each one needs to be loaded manually. I would need to find an older version of the forum that can read this data. The good news is that theoretically we can bring back 911cd.net online in read-only mode so that our conversations don't get lost.
Now need to find some free time for getting this done.
Posted 08 October 2018 - 12:09 PM
Posted 08 October 2018 - 01:15 PM
Posted 08 October 2018 - 04:50 PM
Was cleaning up some old hardware and looking on the files inside. In one of the laptops I have found a backup of the MySQL 911cd.net forum conversations.
...............
Now need to find some free time for getting this done.
This is a very great news!!!
@ Nuno,
Waiting for a future internal solution (as per your last post), do yo think possible to have available the single MySQL files in some way?
Or, in other words, can they be shared?
Posted 08 October 2018 - 06:27 PM
This is a very great news!!!
@ Nuno,
Waiting for a future internal solution (as per your last post), do yo think possible to have available the single MySQL files in some way?
Or, in other words, can they be shared?
These are very good news indeed
But no, the mySQL database shouldn't and cannot be shared.
Two reasons:
1) it may contain "sensitive" data, like e-mails of members, their passwords (hashed), their private messages.
2) it wouldn't be anyway of much use without the scripts (php or other language) that can re-assemble it.
If Nuno has the time, he should have a full IP board software of the "right" version, he could re-assemble the board, put it online (privately) and then use httrack or similar to archive the (dynamic) site to a static version, a number of internal links might well go beserk anyway, but it would be anyway 99% usable as a reference.
It is possible (in theory) to convert to another board software, like (example) discourse:
https://github.com/discourse/discourse
https://meta.discour...discourse/96609
but it is not at all simple and a number of parts can be ignored, if the original software is still available it could be IMHO easier to follow that "archiving" path instead of a "conversion".
Wonko
Posted 08 October 2018 - 10:03 PM
Wonko is right. The data inside is sensitive (emails, IP addresses, private conversations). Making this data anonymous requires a lot of effort and still brings no guarantee of a complete work.
Still, I will keep looking for a way to make these posts portable and distributable as far as possible.
Posted 09 October 2018 - 05:03 AM
Posted 09 October 2018 - 08:55 AM
create a algorithm for user-placeholders "user1;user2;user3;moderator1;moderator2;andsofar1;andsofar2" and make it anonym.
Come on, get real.
You will have threads where:
1) user "Anonymous" asks a question
2) user "Anonymous" replies with a suggestion
3) user "Anonymous" adds a corollary
4) user "Anonymous" posts something completely unrelated
5) user "Anonymous" links to another thread by user "Anonymous" where user "Anonymous" has solved a similar problem that user "Anonymous" had and where user "Anonymous" suggested another possible way out to user "Anonymous"
....
Additionally, consider how the Authorship of a post is VERY relevant, a post by - say - cdob has 99.9999999999% or more exactly 100% +/- 0,00000000001 probabilities of being intelligent, accurate, appropriate and on topic, features that not everyone's contents have.
Wonko
Posted 09 October 2018 - 09:14 AM
Posted 10 October 2018 - 03:01 AM
Wow!! Bruno
Was cleaning up some old hardware and looking on the files inside. In one of the laptops I have found a backup of the MySQL 911cd.net forum conversations.
Posted 14 October 2018 - 02:31 PM
Wow!! Bruno
Bruno?
Maybe you meant Bravo?
Or are you suggesting that someone should be burned at the stake?
https://www.thefreed...onary.com/Bruno
Wonko
Posted 14 October 2018 - 07:44 PM
Not a worry for me, already two years ago decided to add a new first name to address that detail: http://nunobrito1981...1/new-name.html
The name change got official some months ago on my passport and has steadily reduced that nuisance in real-world. Maybe in a couple more years won't be called bruno, nino, nano, kuno or juno anymore. I do have an older brother called bruno brito, it is frustrating that even within my own family to also be called bruno with some frequency..
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